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Monday, October 24, 2022

Media Contact:
Kristi Wheeler | Manager, CEAT Marketing and Communications | 405-744-5831 | kristi.wheeler@okstate.edu

The College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT) at Oklahoma State University
has announced the 2022 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients.

CEAT Hall of Fame nominees must be a distinguished engineer, architect or technologist
who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession or OSU and has served
their community, state and nation with distinction. They should represent some of
the most distinguished alumni and industry leaders associated with CEAT. The following
candidates meet and exceed all criteria for the CEAT Hall of Fame recognition.

The Melvin R. Lohmann Medal was established in 1991 to honor alumni of CEAT for contributions
to the profession or education of engineers, architects or technologists that merits
the highest recognition. These honorees are also inducted into the CEAT Hall of Fame.

Lohmann Medal Recipients

Carolyne M. Gowdy Hart was born in Memphis, Texas, in 1953. Six years later, her family moved to the farming
and oil-producing community of Seminole, Texas, where Carolyne completed her primary
and secondary education.

In 1975, Hart graduated from Howard Payne University with her bachelor’s degree in
mathematics and a minor in biology. Her biology professor, Dr. Jack Stanford, is an
OSU alumnus who encouraged her to apply for OSU’s summer National Science Foundation
Undergraduate Research Participation Program, where she participated in both the microbiology
and electrical engineering (EE) programs.

“I was able to attend both the microbiology and engineering summer seminars, but my
research that summer was guided by Dr. Bob Mulholland from the School of Electrical
and Computer Engineering,” Hart said. “That summer experience was transformative for
me. The OSU faculty invested in me and opened up new horizons for me. It was a template
for what I think higher education ought to be. I was anxious to return to OSU for
graduate studies in EE and to work with my mentor, Dr. Mulholland.”

Hart graduated from OSU with a master’s degree in EE in 1976 and with her doctoral
degree in EE in 1978. However, she left OSU with more than just an education. Hart’s
favorite memory from the university was meeting and spending time with her future
husband, Jay Hart.

After receiving her doctoral degree, Hart accepted a position at Sandia National Laboratories
(SNL), a government-owned, company-operated Federally Funded Research and Development
Center. She started the position during the 1970s energy crisis, when the U.S. Department
of Energy tasked SNL to apply its capabilities to solve urgent energy issues.

“Because of the foundational knowledge that I’d acquired from OSU EE in data acquisition,
signal processing and computational science, I was fully prepared to lead the team
that developed the scientific bases for seismic hydraulic fracture mapping in tight,
lenticular gas sands.”

A second-level manager that remembered Hart’s OSU academic background from her initial
Sandia interview contacted her with an opportunity to lead the navigation, guidance
and control team for the Sandia hypersonic testbed. The team developed and demonstrated
terrain-following and landmark recognition navigation using real-time data from a
small onboard synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Around 20 years later, that foundation
of work was resurrected and informs today’s U.S. hypersonic systems.

As her management career progressed, Hart broadened her experiences and led teams
to solve other national security problems, including leading Sandia’s innovative,
next-generation ISR SAR and aided target recognition systems contributions, which
she considers to be a highlight of her career. However, the final chapter of Hart’s
career was what she considers the most challenging and fulfilling. She served as the
Vice President of Weapons Engineering and Product Realization and also as the Chief
Engineer for Nuclear Weapons at SNL.

“I had a great career at SNL,” Hart said. “I was able to move around in a number of
different disciplines, contributing to the innovation and maturation of a variety
of technologies. But just like with OSU, what really kept me there was the people.
I enjoyed their enthusiasm, collaborative spirit, innovative nature and dedication
to serving the nation.”

Hart has been recognized various times throughout her career. A few of her honors
include being an inductee of the U.S. Air Force Order of the Nucleus, receiving a
U.S. Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) commendation for
technical and programmatic leadership of the most successful airborne IED detection
asset in Afghanistan, receiving the U.S. National Research Council Applied Research
Award for the significant, original contribution to research in rock mechanics, being
selected as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, an honor limited to 10% of Sandia Laboratories’ technical staff, and many more.

Out of everyone in Hart’s life, she considers her mother to be the most influential.
When her mother was 12, she was diagnosed with rubella, which caused blindness. However,
she only took a year off of her education and was allowed to return to the local sighted
school. She graduated with her class and as salutatorian. Her mother’s differences,
perseverance and determination taught Hart values that she will carry with her throughout
everything she does.

“For me, being inducted into the CEAT Hall of Fame and receiving the Lohmann Medal
are more about honoring her life, love and dreams than about honoring my own accomplishments,”
Hart said.

Jim Lansford grew up on, what was originally, a homestead farm in Skyline, Alabama. He graduated
from Auburn University in 1980 with his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering
and with his master’s degree from Georgia Tech in 1982.

Lansford worked as a cooperative education student with the National Security Agency
as his first engineering job. He continued working in defense-related jobs after receiving
his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After meeting OSU’s Professor Rao Yarlagadda,
Lansford decided to leave the industry and pursue his doctorate.

“A friend introduced me to Professor Yarlagadda at a conference and I was very impressed
with his credentials. More importantly than the respect he had in the field of signal
processing, he was modest, supportive and a genuinely kind person,” Lansford said.
“I knew after meeting him that if I wanted to get my doctorate, he was the right person
to be my adviser.”

OSU introduced Lansford to his best friend and wife of 35 years, Lynn Milburn Lansford.
Not only did she attend OSU, but both of her parents worked as professors in the English
department for over three decades. Lansford considers meeting his wife and her family
to be a favorite memory of OSU along with his experience teaching.

“I taught a junior-level class and really enjoyed it; teaching as a graduate student
while at OSU made a wonderful experience even more special,” Lansford said. “It’s
very gratifying to see students do well in their studies and go on to successful careers.
I have continued teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder
(CU), over the last 12 years, and love seeing what my students achieve after graduation!”

After graduating from OSU in 1988, Lansford worked at the Georgia Tech Research Institute
doing research in advanced radar detection algorithms. In 1990, he left to begin teaching
as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He eventually
left the university and helped found a startup as a chief technology officer (CTO)
for Momentum Microsystems, which would start his 25-year journey working in standards
and regulations for wireless communications.

In late 1996, Lansford was hired by Intel Corporation to be the technical lead for
a new technology called HomeRF.  HomeRF combined technology from cordless phones with
wireless local area networks in new ways that helped shape aspects of Wi-Fi technology.
Four years later, Lansford became the vice president and the CTO of Mobilian Corporation.
During his time as CTO at Mobilian, he helped the company raise over $70 million in
venture capital before its acquisition.

After the acquisition of Mobilian by Intel in 2003, Lansford was invited to be the
CTO and one of the founders of Alereon, which was one of the leading startups developing
ultra-wideband wireless technology.  During his 7 years as CTO of Alereon, he helped
raise over $80 million in venture capital. In 2010, Lansford was hired by Cambridge
Silicon Radio as the standards lead for their Wi-Fi technology efforts. The company
was acquired by Qualcomm in 2015 and he has been with Qualcomm since the acquisition.

“As Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both started ramping up to billions of chips per year, a major
problem loomed because they shared the same frequency band but were incompatible,”
Lansford said. “I was able to take ideas for coexistence we had developed at Mobilian
and get them adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
and in turn that technology was adopted by the communications industry.”

This innovation was chosen by Microsoft as the most significant technology for computing
platforms in 2001 at the Windows hardware engineering conference. Today, there are
billions of phones and tablets that have this coexistence technology in them.

Lansford holds eight leadership positions in six different wireless standards organizations. 
He is the chair of the committee in IEEE that is the incubator for all new Wi-Fi technologies,
an industry leader in ultrawideband communications and connected vehicle technology
as well as the chief editor of the SAE standard that defines how cars communicate
with each other to avoid collisions and hazards.

Over the past 12 years, Lansford has been using his career experience as a teaching
opportunity for the students at CU. One piece of advice Lansford gives students before
graduating is to show gratitude to those who have helped them along the way.

“I am grateful to many people for their influence on my life and career,” Lansford
said. “My mother was a teacher and strongly stressed the value of education, as well
as integrity and honesty. Beyond that, I have had several teachers that altered the
course of my life and career. My wife Lynn has also been a huge influence; she is
a passionate humanitarian and has taken on many projects to make the world a better
place, so she invites me to look beyond the bubble of my engineering world to the
larger issues of humanity.”

Lieu R. Smith grew up on a wheat farm 10 miles away from Okeene, Oklahoma after moving from Michigan
City, Indiana, during the great depression. All eight grades were taught in the same
classroom with one teacher for much of Smith’s grade school experience. As he entered
high school, agriculture was one of the basic classes he was required to take each
year.

Growing up in a rural area inspired him to major in agricultural engineering with
an emphasis on soil and water conservation. He graduated from OSU with his bachelor’s
degree in agricultural engineering in 1954 and with his master’s degree in structural
engineering in 1957. Smith also spent two years on active duty with the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.

“My undergraduate time at OSU was a major time of adjustment from a small rural school
background to a major university setting,” Smith said. “It permitted me to expand
my horizons academically and socially as well as mature in my decision-making processes.
My time at OSU, followed by going into the US Army Corps of Engineers as a Commissioned
Officer, formed a core structure of who I was and the lifestyle principles that I
stood for.”

Smith spent the majority of his engineering career working with the Sverdrup Corporation
in St. Louis, Missouri, where he eventually rose to become the rank of corporate vice-president
of advanced technology. The corporation is now a part of Jacob’s Solutions Engineering
Company.

His engineering career started in the early 1960s working with Sverdrup on designing
the large rocket test facilities at Stennis Space Center for the Saturn V Program,
which ended up sending a man to the moon. This was only one of the well-recognized
projects Smith got the opportunity to be a part of. He got to work on, manage and
host projects like test facilities for a 300 mph tracked air cushion research vehicle,
a 400- mile oil pipeline and marine terminal in the country of Algeria, liquid and
solid- rocket engine test stands for the Space Shuttle and a $240 Million Space Shuttle
Launch Pad Complex at Vandenberg, California, Air Force Base.

“The Space Shuttle Launch Pad Complex is the project that I am most proud of,” Smith
said. “Because it was Air Force sponsored instead of NASA, with different missions,
different payloads and operational requirements, it also presented new as well as
constantly changing design requirements. We had a fixed price contract and schedule
with the Air Force so there was a constant flow of contract changes along with the
design requirement changes.”

Smith’s work as the project manager for the Space Shuttle Launch Pad Complex received
numerous awards. On March 5, 1984, the project was featured in Time Magazine and the
launch pad complex was described as the “most sophisticated military complex ever
built.” Smith’s project earned Sverdrup the 1985 Grand Conceptor Award for excellence
in engineering by the American Consulting Engineers Council and the complex was recognized
as one of ten outstanding engineering achievements from the National Society of Professional
Engineers.

In 1993, Smith retired to devote his time to working for his church as a self-sustaining
ordained minister. He pastored the Berryville, Arkansas, Community of Christ for eight
years and was awarded the status of “Pastor Emeritus” upon his retirement at the end
of 2003. He continued to serve as a hospital chaplain and on a number of committees
and boards at Mercy Hospital.

“I have always been mindful that I am in reality an Oklahoma farm boy who grew up
on a very marginal farm during the dust bowl days,” Smith said. “Through the encouragement
and help from a lot of very good people, I became very successful in my profession,
thus it is my intent to give back to society by helping others.”

Smith has practiced helping others through many different professional and community
activities. He has been actively involved in the “Loaves and Fishes Food Bank of the
Ozarks” by designing and funding the construction of a new facility for the storage
and distribution of food to the needy of Carroll County, Arkansas. He has also endowed
a scholarship fund for female Native Americans to become doctors of osteopathic medicine
through the OSU Center for Health Sciences.

Continuing to learn about new concepts and figuring out your strengths are two pieces
of advice Smith recommends to all students in CEAT.

“Don’t be afraid to venture into new avenues of work that you are not familiar with,”
Smith said. “Rockets and Space Ships were not even part of our vocabulary when I was
in school. Secondly, discover what your best talents are and work to maximize them
in your work. I found that mine was being able to organize projects and bring them
to a successful conclusion.”

Hall of Fame inductees

David Boyer grew up in Flora, Illinois, a small rural community in the southern part of the state.
In 1982, he graduated from the Tabor School of Business and Engineering at Millikin
University in Decatur, Illinois. While he had no initial interest in attending graduate
school, he reconsidered after his engineering professors arranged a meeting with OSU’s
industrial engineering and management (IEM) faculty.

“This introduction occurred at an Institute of Industrial Engineering senior chapter
meeting in Decatur, Illinois,” Boyer said. “At the time, I thought the meeting with
Dr. [John] Nazemetz was an impromptu encounter; but years later, I learned that it
was a planned meeting that professors [Jim] Gross and Nazemetz had secretly prearranged.”

In 1984, Boyer graduated from OSU with a Master’s of Science in IEM.

Throughout his time at OSU, Boyer received guidance from many people around him. During
his first semester, he married Sharon E. Boyer, whom he describes as his, “best friend
and the love of his life.”

“Sharon has been and continues to be a pivotal influence in my life,” Boyer said.
“By her enduring example, Sharon taught me that love is forever. Simply put, she is
a very, very special person. And there has never been a better wife, mother or grandmother,
aka Babi.”

He also considered his relationships with his professors to be the most essential
part of his time spent at OSU.

“I very much enjoyed my relationship with my professors,” Boyer said. “Each one of
them took an active interest in me, most notably Drs. Nazemetz and Case. Both these
gentlemen spent many hours with me – coaching, mentoring or just visiting. Their thoughts
and guidance made a profound impact on my life.”

Boyer has worked with Webco Industries since July of 1984. His 38 years of experience
with the company have resulted in diverse and increasing levels of responsibility,
and he now serves as the president, vice-chairman of the board, and chief operating
officer. Webco has grown and succeeded in significant ways during his tenure. Today,
Webco is more than 20 times larger than it was four decades ago. Boyer is proud to
have been a part of this exceptional growth.

Webco is a manufacturer and distributor of specialty metal tubular products, including
precision welded tubing. It produces carbon, stainless steel, nickel, titanium, and
other alloy tube products for a variety of applications. Today, Webco is the most
diverse, technologically sophisticated, and fastest growing specialty metal tube mill
in the United States.

“In some respects, I am not sure that I actually chose my career path; but rather,
I think that my career path chose me,” Boyer said. “When I graduated from OSU, what
I was looking for was ‘a job,’ but what I found at Webco was ‘a home.’ Webco was then
and remains today, a vibrant and forever kind of company that focuses and builds on
the strengths of its people. Webco is where people make the difference, and Webco
is a place that makes a difference in the lives of its teammates - it certainly has
made a significant impact in mine.”

Webco has been recognized by The Top Workplaces Organization as a 2022 Top Workplace
in the United States. It has also been recognized by FastMarkets, the Tulsa Chamber
of Commerce, and Oklahoma State University for overall success and growth as well
as having received numerous customer supplier of the year awards.

Boyer is proud to have worked alongside many exceptional people at Webco; among them
are the company’s founder, Bill Weber, and the company’s chief engineer, Bill Obermark.

Boyer said that he was very blessed and quite honored to have been mentored by Webco’s
founder, Bill Weber. 

“Mr. Weber was the most present and prescient person that I have ever known. From
his wise counsel and inspiring example, I learned important and timeless things about
life and business,” Boyer said.

“I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Webco’s chief engineer, Mr. Bill Obermark,”
Boyer said. “From Bill, I have learned what being an engineer is all about. These
insights were gained from countless hours visiting Bill, often during our many Saturday
lunches together.  Bill is not only an exceptional engineer, he is also a magnificent
mentor and friend.”

Boyer’s roles outside of work are being a husband, father, and grandfather. He and
Sharon have been married for nearly 40 years. The two of them have raised three wonderful
daughters, Sarah, Erynn and Jenna, and have been blessed by three very special sons-in-law,
Josh, B.J., and Nate, and enjoy being active figures in the lives of their five grandchildren,
Emma, Ben, Lane, Madison, and Luke. When Boyer is off the clock, he can be found spending
time with Sharon, at t-ball games, dance recitals, family dinners and conducting “Ice
Monster” reenactments. Dave enjoys his family and sharing life’s experiences with
them.

Jack H. Graham is the owner of Graham and Associates Professional Consulting Engineers in Yukon,
Oklahoma. In 1959 he graduated from Oklahoma State University with a bachelor of science
in electrical engineering. Graham entered engineering at a time of major advancement
in aerospace technology and worked on numerous ground-breaking projects in the middle
of the U.S.-Soviet Union space race.

Graham was born on March 16, 1937, and raised on a dairy farm just outside of Oklahoma
City, Okla., as the youngest of four brothers. His oldest brother attended Oklahoma
A&M and graduated with an electrical engineering degree after serving in World War
II. Each of the brothers followed in his footsteps and all achieved at least a master’s
degree, with Graham receiving a master’s in business administration.

“When my brother was attending college, he didn’t have to milk cows, and that looked
promising,” Graham said. “So, all of us went to OSU and achieved, at least, a master’s
degree and I haven’t had to milk a cow since!”

Graham attended OSU while married with two children. He worked for the university’s
physical plant as an electrician’s helper and finished his required 148 hours needed
to complete a bachelor’s in electrical engineering in only 3 and half years.

After graduating, Graham went to work for the Sperry Gyroscope Company in New York
City, N.Y., where he participated in the development of electronic countermeasures
designed to render the B52 bomber invisible to Soviet radar systems.

“This technology was brand new, and I was on the front line of its design,” Graham
said. “We didn’t know a lot about transistors or solid-state electronics back in those
days, but when I went to New York that’s all we were doing; the very latest solid-state
electronics.”

After working for the Sperry Gyroscope Company for four years the company sent Graham
to Salt Lake City, Utah, to work on a surface-to-surface missile system called Sergeant.
The Sergeant was the first operational solid propellent, inertial guided missile system.

“I was involved in the Army acceptance and compliance testing performed at Aberdeen,
Maryland and at Camp Hale in Colorado,” Graham said. “We also fired several missiles
at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.”

After leaving the Sperry Gyroscope Company, Graham went to work for Boeing at Red
Stone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. While working with German rocket scientist,
Wernher von Braun, Graham contributed to the development of the first stage of the
Saturn 5 rocket system that would later put a man on the moon.

“I was a little cog in a great big wheel that put a man on the moon, one of the thousands
of people involved in the project,” Graham said. “That was the single most extensive
effort of mankind. It had more people and more money invested in it than any other
effort in history. It was very exciting.”

Once the Saturn 5 system was running, Graham left Boeing to work for Ling-Temco-Vought
in Grand Prairie, Texas. The project that company was focused on was creating a satellite
system intended to shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. It didn’t
work.

Having registered as a professional engineer during his time in Alabama, Graham moved
back to Oklahoma City and began working for a mechanical and electrical engineering
consulting firm. Graham bought this firm from its founders in 1974 and changed its
name to Graham and Associates Professional Consulting Engineers.

Graham is a past president of the Oklahoma Society of Professional Engineers, a Fellow
of the National Society of Professional Engineers, a benefactor of the CEAT Dean’s
Club, a member of the Proud and Immortal Society, a Maxwellian Member of the School
of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), a member of the ECE Industrial Advisory
Board and a sponsor of the Jack H. Graham Endowed Fellowship presently held by Professor
John O’Hara in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Graham credits his success in engineering to his education.

“It was essential,” Graham said. “Everything I’ve done as a professional engineer
was based on my education in the engineering department at OSU. I received as good,
if not better, education than many of the engineers whom I worked with when I first
joined Sperry. I’m very proud of the education I received at OSU. An engineering degree
is an outstanding degree. It enables you to go out and, through technology, help build
your society.”

Graham encourages current students not to take their education for granted, “Pay attention
to your professors. You’re there for a purpose, and that purpose is to get educated.
Don’t waste that opportunity.”

Robert W. Thompson graduated from Oklahoma State University with his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering
in 1962 and his master’s degree in 1965.

Before transferring to OSU, Thompson started as a mining engineering student at the
Colorado School of Mines. Between his sophomore and junior years, he worked underground
and at the surface of the climax mine in Colorado. This experience influenced his
decision to switch his major to civil engineering and transfer to OSU.

While at OSU, Thompson was a member of the fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha. He met his wife,
Lynda J. Fulton, at a fraternity and sorority exchange dinner. He considers her to
be his most significant influence in everything that he does.

“My wife certainly had the most influence on my life and career,” Thompson said. “She
graduated in 1962 and did some graduate work at OSU while I completed my master’s
degree. She helped when I started my own business and was a great partner until she
died in 2020.”

Thomspon spent his first two years after graduation working as a structural design
engineer with Ketchum, Konkel, Ryan and Fleming of Denver before becoming an assistant
project engineer on the Chena Hot Springs Highway project in Fairbanks, Alaska.

In 1965, Thompson traveled back to Stillwater, Okla. to complete his master’s degree.

After, he worked for Woodward-Clyde-Sherard and Associates for two years and then
Chen and Associates for four years. Thompson founded his own geotechnical engineering
firm in March of 1971, marking the beginning of the rest of his career.

 CTL/Thompson Inc. currently has 280 employees, eight office locations and over 100,000
projects completed. When Thompson first established the firm, he was supervising a
staff of 20-30 engineers and technical support personnel. At the time, the firm was
known as Robert W. Thompson, Inc.

From 1977 to 1995, Thompson served as the president and chief executive officer of
the firm, making him responsible for overall corporate financial management. The company’s
primary technical areas of interest were soil-structure interaction, expansive soils,
collapsing soils and evaluation of soil or foundation-related failures.

Some of the major projects that the company has been involved in include the 110-mile
railway line laid from Gillette, Wyo., to Douglass, Wyo., for the development of the
Power River Basin coal fields. Thompson was appointed a master witness by the court,
in the Friendly Hills litigation which involved helping to resolve difficult foundation
issues on the order of 100 homes being built in a highly expansive soil area in southeast
Jefferson County, Colo. The firm was retained to do the initial investigation for
the foundation of the terminal building and to provide the basic pavement design for
all of the pavements adjacent to the concourses and taxiways of Denver International
Airport. The firm provided quality assurance for the development and construction
of the award-winning Highway I-70 project in the Glenwood Canyon in Colo. They were
also responsible for the geotechnical portions of the design and construction of the
Fortune Dam in Jefferson County, Colo. Thompson has been involved in the repair of
more than 500 structures.

“My firm has been a leader in bringing the use of soil suction measurements into practice
in the front range area of Colorado,” Thompson said. “I became aware of test methods
for measurement of soil suction through Dr. Donald Snethen at OSU while I was on the
Board of Visitors for Civil Engineering.”

The offices extended from Denver to Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs and Ft. Collins,
Colo., from 1995 to 2000. Commercial testing laboratories were also located in Denver
as well as Burke and Thompson LLC in Dallas, Texas. During this expansion, Thompson’s
role in the company was chairman of the board and chief executive officer. The combined
companies provide geotechnical, materials and geo-environmental engineering services.

Thompson became the senior principal and chairman of CTL Thompson, Inc. in 2000. He
continued his interest in developing testing and analytical procedures for expansive
soils as well as participating in local and national groups representing geotechnical
engineers. In 2003, Thompson started working part-time in his service as a senior
engineer and retired in 2005.

Throughout his career, Thompson has been featured in a wide variety of publications
for the American Society of Civil Engineers, served as the president of the Association
of Soils and Foundations Engineers, and received the 2017 Colorado Legacy Award as
well as many more accomplishments. He has two pieces of advice for all current CEAT
students before they enter their career paths.

“First, learn skills in public speaking and presentations,” Thompson said. “You will
be required to present to planning commissions, building code officials, clients,
professional groups and many others. Second, focus on learning to communicate with
fellow professionals both where you work and engineers, architects and contractors
outside of your employer. You will ultimately need to interact with all of these groups.”

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The College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology would like to congratulate
all of its 2021 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients.

Story By:
Bailey Sisk | basisk@okstate.edu

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